[lbo-talk] Pedrito, God, and the Shanties

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Jun 22 14:36:00 PDT 2004


<blockquote>Peter Miguel Camejo learned almost everything he cares to know about American politics in another country.

As a child of privilege and divorce who lived on Long Island with his mother, he spent summers visiting his father, a wealthy Venezuelan land developer. During one trip to South America, the teenage Camejo looked out at the slums surrounding one of his dad's coastal resorts and asked him if he believed in God.

"Pedrito," Daniel Camejo told his son, gesturing toward the distant shanties where the laborers who built the resort lived. "If God existed, would he allow this?"

The answer jolted Peter into a bright 16-year-old's version of an existential crisis. He sometimes played soccer with his father's workers, and the gulf that separated him from them suddenly felt intolerable.

"That was when I decided and promised I would spend my whole life supporting the poor," Camejo recalled. (Lisa Leff/The Associated Press, "Camejo's Political Lessons Came Early, from Abroad: Profile on California Green Gubernatorial Candidate Peter Camejo," <a href="http://www.cagreens.org/news/displayarticle.php?mediaId=1909">September 16, 2003</a>)</blockquote> -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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